10 Tips to Extend Your Mac Laptop’s Battery Life

Mac OS X Lion was designed to save time with its Mission Control view, iOS-like Launchpad and ability to run several apps at full screen. Apple put a lot of thought into how the hardware and software work together to maximize user productivity and minimize extra work. With these battery-saving tips, you won’t have to worry as much about your Mac running out of juice when you need it most.

1. Turn Off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Disabling your notebook’s wireless radios is one surefire way to eke out more juice. While turning off Wi-Fi may not be practical in every situation—especially if you need to access the Internet often—it will give you more endurance if you’re using your laptop to watch a movie on an airplane.

To turn Bluetooth off:

Click the Bluetooth icon in the upper right-hand corner of the desktop.

Select Turn Bluetooth Off. The icon should now be grayed out.

Alternatively:

Select System Preferences > Bluetooth.

Uncheck the box marked On.

To turn Wi-Fi off:

Click on the Wi-Fi icon in the upper right-hand corner of the desktop.

Select Turn Wi-Fi Off. The icon should change from a number of concentric arcs to an outline that looks like a baseball diamond.

Alternatively:

Open System Preferences > Network.

Uncheck the box marked Turn Wi-Fi Off.

2. Adjust Screen Brightness.

At full brightness, the 13-inch MacBook Air’s screen measures an average of 285 lux. At 40-percent brightness (6 bars), it’s just 29 lux, but still very viewable. And brightness eats power.

To lower screen brightness:

Tap F1 repeatedly until the brightness is at a level just tolerable enough to view comfortably.

Alternatively:

Open System Preferences > Displays.

Adjust the Brightness slider to the level you’re most comfortable with.

3. Tweak Energy Saver preferences.

Changing these settings will cause your Mac to power down energy-consuming components—such as the screen and the hard drive—sooner during periods of inactivity.

Click System Preferences.

Open Energy Saver.

Select the Battery tab.

Move the slider bars for Computer Sleep and Display Sleep as far left as you believe is comfortable. You probably don’t want your computer going to sleep after just one minute but don’t want to leave it on indefinitely either.

Below, select the following checkboxes:

Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible.

Slightly dim the display when using this power source.

Automatically reduce brightness before display goes to sleep.

4. Quit runaway applications.

Occasionally, an app will consume an inordinate amount of system resources even when not in use. Not only does this impact your notebook’s performance, but it also seriously degrades battery life.

Open the Applications folder > Utilities folder.

Click Activity Monitor.

Select the CPU tab.

Select All Processes in the drop-down menu.

Sort the apps by CPU percentage.

Look for any app that is consuming a large percentage, such as more than 70 percent.

Select that app and press the Quit Process icon.

Alternatively, if you know an app is hanging, you can force-quit the app.

Press Command + Option + Esc.

In the window that appears, select the app that’s not responding and force-quit.

5. Turn off backlit keyboard.

While it’s a great feature, the backlit keyboard on Macs can shave precious minutes off your runtime.